He was born in England, grew up in Seattle and calls the road home these days, but no matter where Barns Courtney has been, he’s never been a football guy.

Until he came to Green Bay.

“I know nothing about sports. Nothing. The first time I ever learned anything about football was going into the Lambeau stadium,” the 26-year-old singer/songwriter said over breakfast at the Radisson Hotel & Conference Center last week, the foot he broke when he jumped off the Miller Lite Oasis stage at Summerfest in June propped up on the booth seat.

Courtney had played Lollapalooza in Chicago the weekend prior and took the Green Bay Packers up on their invitation to come spend a couple of days at Lambeau Field. It seemed only appropriate the artist who recorded a special “Green and Gold” version of his song “Glitter and Gold” get acquainted with the legendary venue where the heart-pounding, foot-stomping anthem is destined to become a fan favorite this season.

The chance to see firsthand the history and tradition of the team had a profound effect on the musician who spent all his time as a kid playing in bands, not following sports.

“I was so much out of that scene growing up that when I went into that stadium for the first time, into the Hall of Fame, and I actually sat down and saw all the history of the Packers and how the team came together, and started to figure out how the players felt about playing football, it was really genuinely an exciting experience for me,” he said. “Imagine if you haven’t watched a TV series, and it’s been out for ages and everyone’s talking about it, and then you finally decide to watch it and you just binge watch the whole thing. It’s amazing.”

It was the Packers who reached out to Courtney after hearing his gritty “Glitter and Gold” last year. The bluesy rocker Barns recorded in a decommissioned old folks home in Tottenham, England, using old filing cabinets and film cans for percussion, went to the top of the UK Spotify charts and was a radio hit, too. The team contacted him this spring to see if he would be willing to rewrite some of the lyrics for a Packers-themed version of the song.

Always looking to explore new musical territory, he thought it sounded like a fun project. It wasn’t until he started doing his homework on the team that he realized there were striking parallels between football and his experiences in music.

Courtney knows a thing or two about overcoming hardship and the fight to win. He signed to Island Records at age 19, only to have his band, Dive Bella Dive, get dropped from the label without its completed album — a project he had poured his heart and soul into — ever getting released. Suddenly the artist who thought he had hit the jackpot by scoring a record deal right of high school was working at a computer store and selling cigarettes to pay the bills.

“I think you need a lot of determination and fire in your belly to play professionally, whether that’s professional football or being a professional musician. A lot of the adversities I’ve faced, losing my record deal and struggling to succeed, the kind of themes that I’ve written about on my first record, apply themselves very well to football and to sports,” he said.

“As a writer, I don’t write about things that I don’t know about it. I tried to be as truthful and as honest as possible in my lyrics. but when I actually delved into what the Packers are about and their history, and delved into what the players go through on a daily basis, I realized there were so many parallels with what the song ‘Glitter and Gold’ was already about I hardly had to change any of the lyrics at all. ‘Glitter and Gold’ is all about the struggle to succeed. It’s all about gritting your teeth in the face of adversity.”

Opening lyrics like “I am flesh and I am bone/Rise up, ting ting, like glitter and gold/I've got fire in my soul/Rise up, ting ting, like glitter/Like glitter and gold” needed only minor tweaks to sub in “green and gold.”

After seeing old footage of the Ice Bowl, the chorus of “the dark, the dark, the dark” became “the cold, the cold, the cold.” A line that references everybody in the nosebleeds singing out is applicable to both football games and music gigs — something Courtney was mindful of as he made changes.

“I wanted to be sure if I was doing this that it was something that was true for me as well, because people can see through it when you’re not being honest,” he said. “When I lost my first record deal with Island, I spent three years with zero success trying to get back into making music. So the song is this defiant, passionate, raging plea to do what I love again. That emotion and that feeling and the vast majority of the lyrics matched up perfectly, like being on the field and having to fight against an opposing team.”

The Packers released a 48-second snippet of the song on the team website Aug. 9 with an accompanying video that features Packers defensive highlights. It debuted at Lambeau during the preseason game against the Philadelphia Eagles and will be used throughout the season as “a defense pump-up,” said Gabrielle Valdez Dow, vice president of marketing and fan engagement for the Packers.

“We want it to be organic. We want it to be natural. We want fans to enjoy it. It’s not going to be something that we’re going to require fans to do or say or learn,” she said. “It was just kind of a neat song. When you listen to the lyrics of how he rewrote it, it’s pretty meaningful.”

Courtney didn’t know how meaningful until he immersed himself in the Lambeau experience during his visit. He walked through the tunnels. Watched the videos of fans flooding onto the field after the 1967 Ice Bowl win and toppling the field goal post. Studied the black-and-white photos of the “old-timey guys.”

“The more time I spent in — how do you say it, Lambeau? — Lambeau stadium, the more it started to dawn on me what a big deal this was and what an honor it is to be connected to such a historic team,” he said. “The more I learned about them and how it’s been sold out every game since the ’60s, the more I started to understand the weight of what exactly it was I’ve been given an opportunity to take a part in.

“This is a real family that I’m entering into. This is a real community. It’s not just a football team.”

So overwhelmed by the visit, Courtney, who knows a little something about prestigious venues (he opened for The Who at London’s Wembley Stadium), says he has a hard time putting it into words.

“It was almost like a religious experience. It’s the closest thing I can harken it to. These tunnels they walked me down, they felt sacred. There was a certain like something, some energy buzzing through them you could almost touch,” he said. “I just didn’t expect to be as touched emotionally by all of this as I was."

Courtney is wrapping up a busy summer of high-profile U.S. fests, from The Governors Ball Music Festival in New York City to Hangout Music Festival in Gulf Shores, Ala. He’ll release his first full-length album, “The Attractions of Youth,” on Sept. 29, and his UK tour kicks off mid-September.

He’ll be back in Green Bay on Dec. 23 to perform “Green and Gold” at halftime of the Minnesota Vikings-Packers game. Dow has already tried to prep him for the potential weather conditions. Mainly “the cold, the cold, the cold.”

“We are called the frozen tundra for a reason,” she said. “I just wanted to prepare him for that.”

Humbled his song will be played in front of 80,000 fans on game days, Courtney is fully on board with all things green and gold.

“I feel grateful to be here, to be able to do this. Because they’ve decided to adopt me as their artist, I’m grateful to adopt them as my team. When I commit to something I go all out. I’ll be there at the games screaming my ass off," he said. "When I go and play in December I’m going to give it 110 percent. ... I don’t want to put my name to things that I don’t think are great, and this is a phenomenal team.”

Courtney hopes there’s more than one opportunity to play the song for Packers fans.

“I’m going to perform in December, and when you guys are in the Super Bowl, of course.”